


Pressure

by blushymika



Series: Tender Ash [4]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-07
Updated: 2020-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:20:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23056873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blushymika/pseuds/blushymika
Summary: Sage, haunted by old memories, is stuck in an inescapable cycle of bad days. Luckily, Valentine has a talent for beating the inevitable.
Relationships: Original Male Character/Original Male Character
Series: Tender Ash [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1383427
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3
Collections: Writing Squad Fluff Bingo





	Pressure

**Author's Note:**

> hi!! this was for one of the prompts that taylor requested from the fluff bingo they made me. the prompt was "reassuring the insecure" with sage and valentine. honestly i believe this is more angsty than fluffy because c'mon it's hurt/comfort but i hope this will suffice

It’s the curt slam of the door and the following _tch_ that raises at least a hundred red flags in Valentine’s head.

A backpack is carelessly dropped onto the floor and Valentine silently mourns his boyfriend’s laptop. 

Sage makes his way into the kitchen with heavy footsteps before he opens the fridge, searching for something as Valentine himself searches for what could be bothering the other boy.

He looks over his shoulder from the living room towards the kitchen with a comforting smile.

“Bad day?” Valentine asks, like he doesn’t already know Sage more than he knows himself.

The latter closes the refrigerator, carton of milk in hand before he nods so slightly that Valentine almost misses it.

“Wanna talk about it?”

After returning the milk to its rightful place, Sage finally makes eye contact with his boyfriend. He takes in the reddish hue of Valentine’s face, an indication that he was recently outside in the snow. His black hair is a little frizzy with static, making Sage suspect that he was trying his best to fix it after having it swept around by the wintry air.

Most importantly, however, are the arms that extend towards him as if they have a voice of their own.

They beckon him over, telling him and convincing him that he belongs in Valentine’s arms.

He ditches the cup of milk for now and walks further into the living room with his dramatic, heavy footsteps.

“Sorry,” he finally responds as tears prick his eyes and he takes Valentine’s hands in his own. “Bad day.”

“You okay?” he asks, thumbs rubbing soothingly into Sage’s hands. “Talk to me.”

“I’m fine.”

“You just told me you had a bad day.”

Sage cracks a smile, but Valentine doesn’t return it for once. “Almost every day is a bad day,” he mumbles. “Don’t look at me like that. I’m used to it by now.”

“You shouldn’t be used to that.”

“Val, it’s okay,” he insists before sitting in the older boy’s lap. “Promise.”

Valentine accepts his boyfriend’s embrace, knowing perfectly well that nothing is okay. For Sage, almost everything in his life has definitely been _not_ okay. He thinks for a second, wondering and trying to figure out what has gotten into him today. It could be school. It could be stress, or even both. After all, the two frequently fall hand in hand. On the other hand though, it could be absolutely nothing. Valentine knows a thing or two about waking up in a mood, only for it to ruin the rest of his day.

He does, however, ask anyways because the two of them have always been so different, in spite of the ways they complement each other.

“Did something happen?”

Sage remains silent besides the murmurs he makes into Valentine’s neck.

“Are you whining?”

“I’m not a baby,” Sage says with narrowed eyes.

“Right,” he finally smiles, lightening the mood and making Sage’s eyes soften. “And I’m not Valentine.”

“ _Right_ , you’re a brat.”

“Now there’s the Sage I know and love,” Valentine teases with his hands on his boyfriend’s hips.

They stay like this for a moment as they take in each other’s company. The only times when the silence is broken are when Sage sniffles and when Valentine almost purrs from the feeling of Sage’s fingers running absentmindedly through his hair. 

At times, Sage will compare Valentine to the black cat they occasionally see running along the fence outside. Although, of course, the latter denies it despite the times he actually lies down on Sage’s laptop just to get his attention. It’s bratty, but Sage indulges him all the same, even when he hands in an assignment that still contains Valentine’s keyboard smashes.

There are days when he finds Valentine peeking around the corner of the hallway, secretly judging him for simply drinking a glass of milk.

“It’s weird,” he says because, in Sage’s opinion, he has no taste. “You’re just...drinking it alone. No cookies or anything. It’s not even chocolate milk.”

Sage leans in, his mind filled with love and Valentine, and kisses him. 

Every part of Valentine, even the time when he cried so hard that he couldn’t breathe, is everything that makes up a home that Sage never had or deserved to have.

“Talk to me.” Valentine almost pleads, his voice sending ache after ache through Sage’s heart until he has to pull away. “You were about to cry earlier,” he remarks and, this time, tears prick both of their eyes. “What happened?”

“School,” he replies plainly.

Valentine nods in understanding. “A lot of work?”

“No, it’s not that,” he denies. “School just...it reminds me of my parents.”

“Are they bothering you again?”

Sage shakes his head. “They’ve gotten better, but I feel like nothing’s gonna change. It still feels like there’s always someone watching my every move, like they’re ready to call out my mistakes,” he explains and then hesitates. “I don’t want to be a failure. I don’t want to be like everyone else. I don’t want to be average. I want to be unique and I want to be better than everyone else in my class.”

His lip quivers for a few seconds before he asks, “Does that make me a bad person?”

“No,” Valentine says immediately without putting any thought into his answer because, simply, he doesn’t need to debate on whether his boyfriend is a good person or not.

Sage has his issues—like everyone else in the world—and maybe he lashes out sometimes, but he has never been devoid of guilt or remorse. In Valentine’s eyes, Sage feels these two emotions more strongly than others. He beats himself up for everything and to an extent where Valentine worries that something will happen to him, something self-inflicted.

“Does that change how you see me?” 

Valentine frowns, realizing that Sage has broken eye contact as he anxiously waits for a response. There’s a croak and a stutter to his voice as it threatens to break and send Sage into a deep, dark pit of silence. His heart is probably beating wildly in his chest, Valentine notes, and his breathing is coming out in short, heavy puffs of air.

He pulls Sage closer as he slowly tightens his embrace. Valentine knows that this is what Sage needs, what he wants. They’ve talked about this before when Sage started hyperventilating around him for the first time. He needs the pressure, something to anchor him down as he struggles to breathe and fight off his own thoughts.

Valentine also knows about Sage’s parents. He knows about the neglect. He knows about their obsession with a good education and career and how it affects their son. He knows about the source behind Sage’s fears of the dark and enclosed spaces.

What Sage’s parents don’t know, however, is that their son can’t imagine a future for himself.

Outshining others, coming out on top, and being the best are goals that lie within his subconscious, affecting every thought and emotion and action.

It’s difficult, Valentine knows it is, to only receive a fake type of love on a condition.

Real love is unconditional without any what if’s because, in spite of what happens, Valentine’s love for Sage will never die.

“It doesn’t change anything,” he tells him and increases the pressure. “You’re far from a bad person.”

“But it’s not okay that I want this,” Sage argues through deep, shaky breaths. “It’s not fair to other people but I want to be smarter and better than them. I need to be.”

Valentine cups his face now, their eyes locking and Sage trembles from the loss of pressure.

“You don’t want to be better than everyone else just for the sake of being better,” he explains. “You wanna be better because you think that’s what’s gonna make you happy.”

“It’s what they—”

“What they would want,” Valentine finishes. “What do you want, angel?”

Sage, speechless, shakes his head before he continues to protest, “Valentine, I’m nothing but bad things.”

“Wanting to be happy doesn’t make you a bad person,” he tells him again. “You help all of us, Sage. The way you help Ara especially and make her feel loved isn’t something a bad person would do.”

“But my thoughts—”

“I want you to be happy,” Valentine declares and Sage blushes through the tears in his eyes. “But there are other ways to be happy too.

“You have to be kind to yourself. Treat yourself the way you treat Ara and how you love her no matter what, no matter what happens.”

Sage bites his lip and rests his forehead against Valentine’s. “I don’t know how,” he says. “Even if I told myself those things, I won’t ever believe it.”

“Then I’ll help you,” Valentine offers. “I’ll help you be kind to yourself. I’ll help you see yourself the way I see you.”

Suddenly, Sage smiles as he tucks a lock of hair behind Valentine’s ear. “And how do you see me?”

“I see you with love,” he confesses. 

“You’re a romance novel.”

“It’s only because I love you so much.”

“In spite of everything I said?”

“Maybe even more now.”

Sage kisses Valentine again, relishing in the softness of both his words and his lips. 

If only Valentine could see how himself right now.

He would never stop loving himself. He would never doubt his own perfection. He would admire the perfectly pink blush on his face and want to kiss it all day.

Although maybe there is a little bias in those statements, and it makes Sage realize that this is how Valentine sees him—with love.

His lips are Sage’s medicine, his cure.

Valentine’s kindness is shown through his eyes and a different type of pressure that he gives Sage in order to provide him with something he’s never had before.

Stability.

His hands are firm. His embrace is locked tightly, the key nowhere to be found.

Here, with a liberating kind of pressure, Sage feels his jaw unclench and his posture falter until he’s lying down on Valentine and smushing him into the couch with a smile on his face.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! <3


End file.
